


The Pilot and the Scientist

by SisonaCR (fanfreak)



Category: Mass Effect, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Adventure, F/M, Original Character - Freeform, Other, romancing the pilot, salarian romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-19 12:14:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10639647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fanfreak/pseuds/SisonaCR
Summary: As a Second Wave scientist studying the Remnant technology on Meridian, Jessika Ligh needed a pilot. What she didn't expect was one of the best pilots around to volunteer to help her. The Pathfinder's pilot on the Tempest, the salarian, Kallo Jath. She ALSO didn't expect to get such a major crush on him, but her wild imagination and his gentle way of handling her scoliosis has meant she has crushed head first. On their third trip out into Meridian, however, Jessi will find out first hand just how good of a pilot Kallo is. But will that be enough to get them home safely?





	1. Not a Captain

**Author's Note:**

> Another Mass Effect game, another lacking a Salarian romance. So I've decided to fix the situation. This was going to just be a cute little fluff piece of an OC and Kallo but it's kind of exploded in scope in my head. I'm still going to try and keep this to just a few chapters. Nothing crazy, but hopefully fun.

Every time. Every time she woke up and looked out her window, it was like waking up from her cryo pod for the first time.

Jessi grinned at her slight reflection before focusing, again, beyond to the planet beyond. Meridian. So much left unexplored, but so green and majestic, just like all of the Initiative videos had promised.

“Mmmm…” she hummed to herself, biting her bottom lip. Then she pointed out toward a rise in the distance. “That way.”

It might be that way she would explore today, it might not. Jessi had already put in a trajectory last week and had it confirmed. The rubber stamping needed to so much as step outside didn’t stop her from enjoying the sense of adventure and exploration. After all, Jessi’s trip required commissioning a shuttle and a pilot, not to mention necessary equipment. Protocol meant she was going wherever she had outlined in her request form.

But she could pretend.

“Captain,” she spoked again to her reflection, faking a salute.

Stepping outside of her room immediately placed her in a hub bub of people. Going left, right, zig zagging and so forth, whatever type of movement people did. She dodged under a krogan’s swinging arm, barely having to stoop due to only being five feet tall. Maybe even less, but she told people she was five feet. It was easier than explaining her slight scoliosis made her shrink and inch every so often until she saw a chiropractor.

It almost kept her out of the Initiative. It certainly was part of the reason she was kept back as part of the second wave since they were in short supply of chiropractors. Her work on Prothean artifacts won her way onboard the Hyperion in the end.

Or maybe it was the bugs she introduced into the Nexus computer that only she could fix that annoyed them into agreement. The galaxy might never know…

“Short stuff!” A hand came down on Jessi’s head, pausing her forward momentum. “Surprised I could even find you.”

Leoni’s blue lips split into a youthful grin, belying her some four odd centuries of age as she looked down upon her roommate. Or one of them. Hyperion only had so many rooms so they were forced to share. Which worked fine for Jessi. Asari made better roommates than most humans she had known. Plus it seemed like an unspoken agreement that she wouldn’t stare uncomfortably long at their head tentacles and they wouldn’t stare at the curve in her spine or the scars from her surgery.

“Down here is where the party’s at, it only makes sense you’d be looking,” Jessi said with a wink.

“Don’t lie! I mean, you can’t even dance,” Leoni laughed, taking her hand away. “Though here I was thinking I needed to come wake you up so you wouldn’t be late for your boyfriend.”

“Not my boyfriend,” Jessi said, pointing in the direction she was heading. Then she swiveled and pointed at Leoni. “Not my mother.”

“There’s a relief, I’d request a refund since you’re much too pink to be my spawn.”

“I hope I’m around to tell your daughters you not only think you have to pay credits for them but think of them as spawn.”

Leoni shrugged. “You try to be a multi species obstetrician and tell me babies aren’t parasitical little spawns.”

“Sorry, I only get the one hundred years. Gotta go, sorry. Don’t wait up for me, Ma!”

“You’re grounded!”

“La, la, la can’t hear you!”

Leoni’s laugh followed her over the crowd of people and to the docking bay.

“Doctor Jessika Ligh, good morning. Kallo Jath is waiting for you.”

“Thanks SAM.”

She never got tired of speaking to the AI. The Pathfinder’s AI. It was probably the moment she realized there had to be one in the Initiative that Jessi really wanted to go with. That sort of thing just wasn’t possible in the Milky Way. Oh there were rumours of people doing experiments all the time, but nothing she could comfortably work on.

Not that she was working on an AI now, but in her imagination she was. Instead Jessi was heading out into Meridian to see if she couldn’t figure out how the Remnant worked. SAM was here in a capacity to help with that.

And so was he.

“Jessika, I was sure you’d forgotten.” The salarian pilot set down his crate to wave, a gesture that seemed awkward. Like he’d been told by a human friend that waving was a thing humans did but his hands were much more used to working. 

Which seemed to be common amongst salarians. They had short lives in comparison to humans so they always seemed to be going at top speed, making sure not to ‘waste’ time. But Kallo seemed to be the epitome of obsessive worker and specialist. Probably he’d been here for a full hour fussing over the shuttle even though it’d flown just fine two days ago and three days before that.

“Did you really or were you hoping?”

“Of course not!” Kallo said and Jessi felt a small jump in her chest. “This is important work that we’re doing. You’re doing. I’m just proud to be a small part of it.”

“Oh.”

Yeah, right, of course. Her work. With the Remnant. As if Kallo didn’t have a whole lot more experience with them due to his connection to the Pathfinder. Who he would go back to working with the moment Ryder needed to take off in the Tempest. Then Jessi would have to find a different pilot to keep doing her tests.

Going on my adventures.

But the sinking feeling didn’t want to go away and Jessi just didn’t think it would be an adventure if Kallo wasn’t her pilot. Be really routine and clinical probably. SAM probably couldn’t or wouldn’t help as much – or at all – at that point too. After all, she was really nobody special. Not actually a Captain, not even close to a Pathfinder. Just one of the many, many scientists onboard.

Go her…

“Yeah, well,” Jessi said, bending over to pick up a crate but finding it was too head and changing over to a bag instead. It was so smooth, no chance anybody noticed! “There’s only so many days left of the Pathfinder shore leave, figured you’d want the excuse to use some of it!” So smooth.

“Are you kidding?” Kallo chuckled, taking the crate she so smoothly couldn’t lift and following her into the shuttle. He left the one he’d been carrying earlier. She wanted to cry because he didn’t say anything about it or act like it was unusual she couldn’t carry it. “This is exactly how I’d want to be spending a vacation!”

“I think you and I have different definitions on ‘vacation,’ Kallo.”

“Funny,” the pilot said, cocking his head to the side. “That’s exactly what Ryder said. But I would think you’d understand. Even in your downtime you’re asking SAM about the Remnant or filling out logs on what we’ve discovered. Or napping.”

“I need my beauty sleep…” Jessi mumbled.

He knew what she did in her downtime!?

Kallo chuckled. Which always sounded kind of weirdly cool in salarians because their voice range was naturally high. But their laughs – okay, maybe she only noticed with Kallo – went kind of low. Like it was coming from the chest. Just at the top of that concave bend their abdomens did. There was just something endearing about when a salarian’s voice – okay, when Kallo’s voice – went lower.

Though was he laughing at her or with her? Like, did he think Jessi just made a joke? And if so was he thinking that no amount of beauty sleep would help? Because if so she wouldn’t really blame him. Not just because they were different species. But Jessi had this whole Snow White pale as ivory skin with ebony hair but not in the pleasant princess way. She had pretty, bright, sharp blue eyes, she liked that about herself. She would more if her eyes weren’t so sunk into her face right above a nose that was way too big for her tiny features. 

Jessi wouldn’t call herself ugly. But she often got stopped so people could ask where her parents were, so there was that. And a lot of those people – especially in the Milky Way – got really worried when they saw the nasty scar that slashed across her forehead. Like they thought she was being abused or something. When really she was a doofus that did one of those “Hey everybody, watch this!” things and cracked open her forehead. She couldn’t even remember which doofus thing it was, there were so many of them.

Something about being stuck in a back brace after surgery for nine months made a person kind of stir crazy and do… well, doofus stuff.

“I’ll let you confer with SAM about our destination today and finish loading,” Kallo said, pointing over his shoulder.

Jessi sunk down in the co-pilot seat, watching him go, her heart pitter pattering the entire way. Maybe she ought to talk to a doctor about that…

“I’m not sure if it’s wise to continue with this excursion after the last two failed to reveal anything new, Dr. Ligh,” SAM spoke up.

“Call me Jessi.” Should have gotten a name change when she came to Andromeda. But she’d been too lazy to.

“You never ask Kallo to call you Jessi.”

Because I like it when he calls me Jessika.

“You can call me Jessika too if you want,” she said with a small shrug. Her nose was going to grow another size if she kept this up. Jessi hated not saying exactly what was on her mind. Which got her in trouble a lot but that was better than keeping her thoughts inside where they got all crowded. “And we have to take some chances if we are going to learn anything. It’ll be fine SAM.”

“You’ll be out of the Hyperion’s comm range for 11 hours. If something were to go wrong…”

“That’s what emergency supplies are for,” Kallo interrupted. “All done. Are you ready?”

“I was simply expressing a concern. The probability of something going wrong is remote but not impossible. Do be careful.”

“I’ll fill you in on everything tomorrow, SAM,” Jessi said, buckling in. “It’ll be fine.”

What could go wrong?


	2. Not a Co-Pilot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to say last time that I'm not sure whether or not scoliosis is something humanity might have found a solution to in the future. I mean, we can bring Shepard back to life how can we not fix a curving spine? So maybe Jessi having it is a little unrealistic with Mass Effect lore but it's a condition that is very important to me as my mom, my sister and my cousin all have it. Two of them had to go through a surgery to have a metal rod put in their back, causing a lot of discomfort. I didn't plan on my character having scoliosis when I sat down to write but it seemed right once I got started.

“Wait, where is it?”

 

Panic gripped jessi’s throat as she bent over the readings. Maybe it said something different than what their eyes. That over the ridge and around the bend there wasn't a Remnant facility. They had been set up at equal junctions so far to suddenly be nothing here? This wasn't right.

 

“Most unusual,” Kallo said, his voice mostly curious. That he wasn't panicked or concerned just yet made her feel slightly better.

 

Slightly.

 

If something was wrong here then they needed to turn back. Then likely they’d send a different team entirely to check it out. Including soldiers. Which meant if just anything shot back then things could get destroyed. Not exactly something Jessi wanted to see happen to something that was  _ her  _ project!

 

Okay, it wasn’t as if people were lining up out the door to go this far out. Some biologists and botanists, sure. A couple engineers. But only Jessi was an engineer archeologist, just perfect for studying the Remnant. And she was willing to venture out past the zone they could reasonably monitor with minimum supplies.

 

Partly because they were  _ supposed _ to stay in the shuttle.

 

“Should we set down at the LZ?” Kallo asked, glancing at her.

 

Focused on the readings as she was, Jessi could only feel his gaze. Which was not helpful. That she could just notice he was staring at her when she couldn't see him.

 

_ Except for on your downtime apparently. _

 

“Can we circle around first? Maybe something buried the entrance,” Jessi suggested, feeling remarkably reasonable. Good, good. She could do this. Handle things going wrong.

 

“Like an earthquake?” Kallo said.

 

It wasn't an answer to her question but she was getting used to that. Instead, Kallo’s fingers changed on the controls. The shuttle drifted out away from their landing zone to better accommodate circling around.

 

“Have we noted any seismic activity here?” Jessi questioned back.

 

“Hainly noticed some on Eos and theorized it was the vault, could it be the same here?”

 

Okay, now he was trying to turn it into a question. Jessi snickered. They did accidentally for nearly an hour their first time out. Neither really pointed it out so she wasn't sure Kallo was doing it on purpose as a sort of game when they did it again. This seemed to be the first indication since that seemed so forced. Or maybe he just liked to phrase things as questions and she was making fun of his pattern of speech. Crap, now she couldn't say anything.

 

“Might be animals, I guess. Though I don't know if there are any out here…”

 

“Ha, I win this time! It's my first time too.”

 

Jessi dragged her eyes away from the view to stare at Kallo. It was a good thing she did because the most adorable proud look was on his face. Just too fucking  _ precious _ ! He was so unironic about it too, it was as if he had just accomplished something very important. When all he's done was win a game they'd never acknowledged they were playing but apparently had agreed to without speaking.

 

What was she supposed to do with that? Because really she just wanted to lean in and kiss his cheek. There was a chance that would mean very little to a salarian. Just a silly little human quirk. 

 

Or he'd know exactly what she meant and it would get super awkward. Because Salarians didn't have a sex drive and seemed to avoid romantic relationships. At least anything Jessi might recognize as a relationship. Maybe they did and it just wasn’t cute couch cuddles movie night type dating and that was just a real shame because she thought Kallo would be really fun to watch movies with. But he might not want to watch movies with  _ her _ and would have to turn her down and it would just be a really long flight back to Hyperion after that.

 

And that was it. The only two options if she kissed him on the cheek. Obviously. No chance he’d get adorably flustered and confess he had feelings for her (after, you know, only three days of hanging out) and he just didn’t think she felt the same. After all he was a  _ salarian _ .

 

“Wait, what’s that?” Jessi said, pointing out the window.

 

It had to be a dozen meters at least from where it ought to be, but the telltale Remnant architecture seemed to be peaking out of the grass. Kallo’s face turned serious as he concentrated back on flying, adjusting course toward the architecture. The readings confirmed that this was no where close to their flight plan and the signal she expected distorted slightly. Something clearly wasn’t going right here. Maybe earthquake was a fair guess after all.

 

“Oh my,” Kallo said in a hushed tone.

 

Jessi glanced up again and gasped.

 

Instead of a door acting like a cave entrance that they had seen at the past two sites, what she’d seen in the distance was the lip of an expansive hole. As far as they could see, the entire thing was ringed with Remnant architecture, leading into the hollow tunnel going straight down into the ground.

 

“It’s beautiful…” Jessi whispered, adjusting her straps to lean toward the window.

 

“Mmmm…” Kallo hummed, not as impressed. “Dangerous is probably more of the word I’d use. Certainly unexpected. Unknown. We didn’t prepare for  _ this _ , Jessika.”

 

She chewed her bottom lip, round blue eyes skating across what they could see. The far side was  _ almost _ visible through a mist. A mist that seemed to be coming from the hole. So was there water in there? Was the water supposed to be there? Oh, and was something heating up the water? Yeah, that might be dangerous. And Kallo was right, they didn’t have equipment for spelunking. The last two sites had been one or two room locations. Maybe there was more that she couldn’t unlock that Ryder might have been able to.

 

This? This was massive. Unexpected. Unexplainable right now. And it really would take a whole team of experts to study. A team that Jessi might not even be able to get for months, possibly years. There were other priorities. Then she would be grounded, waiting for approval. Meanwhile, Kallo would fly off in the Tempest to explore all sorts of cool things with the Pathfinder.

 

But this was supposed to be  _ her _ adventure. However small. Turning back now would mean not getting it at all.

 

“Maybe…” Jessi let out a heavy breath, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. “Maybe just fly past it to get some readings and we head back… Okay?”

 

“I…” 

 

Kallo seemed to be trying to look at her face so she stubbornly turned it away. No way she was going to cry like a little disappointed child because things didn’t turn out how she imagined them to. This was part of being a scientist! She ought to be thrilled at discovering something new and unexpected. This could have her name on it for years to come, even if it only ended up being a footnote in the files about Meridian. She could still be in there next to Pathfinder Ryder, Captain Dunn, and all the rest.

 

That was why she came to Andromeda. To prove she had what it took not to stay in some lab doing data entry for a scientist with a degree from a fancier school than she could afford. Out here nobody cared. Out here her merit was all that mattered.

 

But right now all that mattered was her stupid school girl crush and feeling like everything was dead set against her ever actually getting out in the field.

 

“You know, I think I see a place to set down,” Kallo said in a pitying voice. Or maybe it was apologetic. “Give me a chance to check over the shuttle, make sure it’s ready for the trip back. Yes, I think that is the best course.”

 

“You checked over it like a billion times before we left waiting for me to wake up,” Jessi grumbled. “It’s fine.”

 

Kallo cleared his throat. “I just meant…”

 

“I know what you meant. I couldn’t get many tests done in five minutes anyways.” She was trying  _ really _ hard not to snap at him. He was never going to want to fly with her again if she became a little brat. Sheesh, Jessi could hardly stand herself right now. She needed to find some positivity.

 

“How about in forty minutes? Because I packed a picnic lunch and it would be a real shame to let Suvi’s hard work go to waste,” Kallo in a sweet little innocent voice.

 

Did salarian’s blush? Because Jessi thought she saw a faint bit of blush in Kallo’s cheeks.

 

“Mmmm,” she hummed, buying herself time to swallow a lump in her throat. “Yeah I… I think I could get something done in forty minutes.”

 

A smile graced Kallo’s lips and his fingers flew across the controls, taking them in toward the Remnant crater.

 

“Not sure I trust the food Suvi packed though,” she added.

 

“I wasn’t sure what kinds of food humans liked for picnics,” Kallo said, glancing at her. “On Sur’kesh picnics meant going out and waiting for food to come to you.”

 

“Ew, gross! You’re joking, right? Right?”

 

“I would nev--”

 

The interrupting pop wasn’t so much loud as it was sudden. Jessi’s computer screen turned green before a puff of smoke went up from the console. She and Kallo had a second to exchange glances before  _ something _ went wrong with the shuttle. Not being a pilot, Jessi barely understood the readings that Kallo was hurriedly trying to steady before the shuttle lurched suddenly to the side.

 

The wing scraped the mountain side, sparks and flames bursting.

 

“Hold on, hold on!” Kallo shouted.

 

Beeps and whistles from so many machines spewing warnings that something was wrong crowded the shuttle. As if it weren’t obvious something was wrong from their vantage. She was pretty sure Kallo cursed in whatever language the salarians spoke.

 

“What can I do?” Jessi shouted only to cough on smoke. She opened up co-pilot protocols, hoping there might be instructions? Or anything helpful, really.

 

“Just…” The shuttle was swung away from the mountain, nearly spinning upside down. “Hold… On!”

 

They were nearly righted. As much as they could be in a twitching shuttle with one side nearly torn off.

 

When all of Kallo’s controls went offline.

 

She wasn’t proud of it but Jessi screamed. Maybe it was warranted as the shuttle lurched and then nose dived toward the edge of the hole. Certainly Kallo shouted fearfully. But she managed to cut it off and reach for the co-pilot controls.  _ Anything _ hand to be better than straight down.

 

Whatever she did brought the nose up a little. They scraped the edge of the hole, and in her loosened straps Jessika was bounced up, head hitting the top of the shuttle.

 

“Jessika!”

 

Everything went black.

  
  



	3. Not A Hero

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

 

What idea that was, Jessi was hazy on. But she was waking up with that poundy achey stomach-squeezy bad feeling she got when she went to bed panicking over something.

 

Or, she corrected as she finally opened her eyes, that was a concussion. Because there wasn’t supposed to be a hole in the shuttle. Also it was dark and she could hear water dripping. Maybe that was oil? Crap, was the shuttle going to explode like in a vid?

 

Jessi sat up and instantly wished she hadn’t and could go back to bed. But somewhere in the back of her noggin was this voice that said if she had a concussion she shouldn’t fall asleep. Right now, though, she’d rather she needed to do a really important exam and was having a major panic attack right now than having a concussion. The only benefit was that if her back hurt, it hurt no more than the rest of her did. Though all of her hurt rather a lot. Like a cold day after doing some lifting that she shouldn’t have done but not just in her back, all over.

 

_ ‘You got hit by a shuttle, of course you hurt,’ _ she thought, reaching up tentatively to her head.

 

She hit bandages and instantly had to struggle to her feet.

 

“Kallo?” she called out. “Kallo!”

 

Woozy didn’t begin to cover the not-at-sea-sea-legs she experienced upon getting vertical, taking in the surroundings. The hole wasn’t actually as big as she thought it was and it was firmly up against the black wall of wherever they crashed. Though that was where the water was dripping from and that was annoying. Crates were strewn everywhere, some bent and twisted though with signs of somebody trying to pry them open.

 

The only lighting came from distant green and blue lighting coming through the windows at the front of the shuttle and the cracks of the twisted doors. Which were higher up than the side Jessi was standing at. Her side, near the front of the shuttle, was the hole. Wincing, she noted that her seat was punctured with twisted hull.

 

Probably the concussion was a  _ lucky _ injury for her to have. If she were three inches taller and had been wearing her harness like she was supposed to, Jessika would have been stuck in her seat and killed. Or dying.

 

Her heart jumped to her throat at a shriek that seemed to scrape across the rock, the hull of the shuttle and then her skin. Like a nail on sheet metal. Just an awful, awful noise.

 

But what if that was Kallo, hurt?

 

“Kallo!” she shouted louder than before, scrambling up the incline and to the door.

 

She fell back to her starting point twice as she failed to unlatch the door. Even with the angle, she couldn’t quite reach the part twisted inward that looked like it could be used as a handle. The third time she rushed it, colliding with her shoulder and managing to make a crack between the door and the hull. Jessi pulled herself through that, dropping down onto the Remnant vault floor.

 

Distracted, again, she craned her head back to try and find sky. But all she got was mist bouncing lights back at her and then being swallowed up by the black rock and metal combination of remnant architecture. It went as far as she could see to her right and the same to her left. In front, several meters of floor and then a cut off to more hole.

 

For the first time since waking up Jessi thought she check her omnitool. Comms were out, of course, and she wasn’t sure the time and date were accurate - she’d check with Kallo if she found him and his was working - but her scanner was working. Jessi tested it on the shuttle first to be sure and sure enough… it was a broken shuttle.

 

Inching her way to the edge of the chasm, Jessi got a better feel for her injuries. Whether or not she broke or sprained something, her right hip was definitely higher than her left. Higher than usual, anyways. The scoliosis meant it was always higher but proper care and the right size shoes meant nobody would notice. Walking right now, she was definitely limping. There was a burn on that side’s arm as well but a salve had been put on that and she couldn’t quite feel it. The cool air of the remnant crater, hole… tunnel thing irritated it a little.

 

And of course her head.

 

Whenever she imagined adventures, there were a fair share of ship crashes that Jessi walked away from as the heroic space captain. She shouldered the pain stoically even though it was always ‘worse than it looks’ telling her doctor “I’ve had worse!” But realistically, Jessi always figured she’d be a crying mess, adrenaline be damned.

 

Right now, though, she felt her fantasies might not have been that far off the mark. The months spent in hospital from her back surgery still outshone the dull aching, throbbing pain she was dealing with currently. Of course head damage could mean brain damage could mean there was pain she wasn’t experiencing. Not to mention adrenaline.

 

They still wouldn’t make her a starship captain. Jessi would get tongue tied and have panic attacks during alien negotiations and have zero sexual chemistry with any of the alien babes as she had, like, negative sexual attraction to anybody. Period.

 

“Kallo?” Jessi said in a more hushed tone.

 

She’d reached the edge of the hole and decided she was afraid of heights all of a sudden. Jessi had never had vertigo before; in fact she was the reckless child that climbed things to jump off them in crazy stunts. But here she was reminding herself not to hold her breath as she leaned out over the empty space, omnitool scanning.

 

A meter down and to her left, big yellow eyes stared back at her over monstrous teeth.

 

Jessi yelped and scrambled backwards. The shriek echoed in her head again, drilling out through her ear drums to the point Jessi was sure she was bleeding from them.

 

“Kallo!?”

 

“Hush!” A three fingered hand clamped down over her mouth.

 

When she’d become on the verge of tears, Jessi wasn’t sure but she was definitely too choked up to say anything even if Kallo wasn’t holding his palm over her lips. She looked up at his soot covered face, noting the tears in his clothing and what looked like bruises on his arms. There was a few bits of dried blood on his uniform, most notably red human blood - hers - but some salarian blood as well. 

 

“Inside the shuttle,” Kallo hissed. “Hurry, quick!”

 

He pushed her shoulder with so much pressure it almost hurt. Certainly got his message across and she turned to head back to the shuttle. Jessi couldn’t flat out run, it wasn’t too far of a distance she didn’t think anyways, but her hurried steps made her limp more pronounced. And more painful. She sniffled back tears at precisely the moment she heard that shriek again.

 

And horribly, it was echoed by a  _ second  _ shriek.

 

“Come on, come on…” Kallo muttered behind her.

 

It didn’t seem to be directed at her, but Jessi still got the message and hurried her pace. But when she reached the shuttle and grasped the lowest point to lift herself up,  _ that _ was when her back decided to remind her of pain. Of cold metal fire rushing up and down her spine, ending in a burning poker being stabbed into her hip.

 

She cried out, stuffing a fist into her mouth to stifle the sound as she barely kept from laying down to roll around in the pain. It was like waking up during the surgery all over again.

 

There was a metal clang and then hands gently taking her by the shoulders. Soothing sounds that might have been words.

 

“Kallo I can’t… I can’t…”

 

She didn’t want to admit it, didn’t want to think about how blotchy red her face was from crying. Or that there was another shriek that was closer than any of the ones before. He just needed to climb up in the shuttle to safety and leave her to get eaten up by monsters. It would hurt less afterwards.

 

“Jessika, I want you to step in my hands and climb up there,” Kallo said with an edge of panic. He was trying to make it a command but it wavered because he was so terrified. And she was just afraid of more pain.

 

“I can’t… I can’t…”

 

“ _ Yes _ ,” Kallo half snapped, more forceful. “You can. You’ve had worse and I’m not getting into that shuttle until you are. That’s final, Jessika.”

 

_ Breathe, Jessika. You don’t move past the pain until you relax and let it go… _

 

She took in a breath and let it out. Did it again. Two more times to be safe. 

 

Then she stepped into Kallo’s hands with her right leg, letting him lift the hurting one, and scrambled up mostly using her left side. Though she whimpered at many times and it felt like forever, Jessi still couldn’t quite recall as she came to be rolling over the edge into the shuttle. There might have been a second where she blacked out.

 

She turned back around to reach out a hand to Kallo who took it gratefully even if he didn’t pull on it too much. On his knees in the shuttle, he turned and shut the shuttle door then went to his omnitool, punching something in.

 

Her headache instantly felt worse but she barely dared to breathe, watching intensely as Kallo listened intensely at the door, eyes on his omnitool. Seconds ticked by the rate of the water dripping. Ten. Twenty five. Fifty seven. Eight three. Finally one hundred and sixteen, Kallo let out a sigh and punched into his omnitool. A humming in the shuttle stopped and her head felt a little better.

 

“Oh they’re gone,” Kallo sighed, going limp and resting his head against the wall of the shuttle.

 

“What…”

 

Her voice was a squeak from crying and Jessi couldn’t bring herself to finish the question.

 

“Some sort of beasts,” Kallo answered anyways. “I saw one at a distance chewing something up and they’ve been terrorizing the shuttle on and off. They don’t seem able to see, probably adaption to the environment? I manage to scare them off by projecting a certain frequency but the shuttle only has so much power so…”

 

“How long have I been…?

 

“Unconscious?” Kallo frowned deeply, his eyes looking Jessika up and down. He flexed a hand a couple of times too. “Well, we’re over our 11 hour window before we were supposed to hit comms again plus that again. I… I wasn’t sure…”

 

Her heart hurt in her chest at the catch in Kallo’s throat when he trailed off, her imagination filling in words that seemed logical but that she couldn’t fathom were real.

 

“Thank you,” she murmured, pointing to the door. “For… for…”

 

They… were really bad at this talking thing when they weren’t playing stupid ‘respond to the question with a question’ games.

 

“Of course,” Kallo said. “I wasn’t going to leave you.”

 

“I wouldn’t have blamed you,” Jessi blurted.

 

There was a mix of anger in Kallo’s sad eyes and his lips went back and forth between frowning and being pressed tightly together. 

 

“Well I would have.”

 

It was such a final tone that it seemed to linger in the air between them. Jessi wasn’t sure what he was so angry about and how she made him that way. But like always in these situations it seemed better to disengage. So she turned and allowed herself to slip down the incline of the shuttle and started picking up random items to rearrange them. Halfway through she figured she’d do it usefully and sorted them in broken, useful and not useful piles.

 

Kallo stared at her the entire time.

  
In the distance one of those things shrieked.


	4. Not a Doctor

Most of the food and medical supplies - really it was a simple first aid kit, they weren’t supposed to need more than basics on this kind of trip - had been organized already. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that hard of a task. Most of the food had been destroyed in the crash and the rest was starting to go bad.

 

Having been unconscious for so long, Jessi was definitely starving. But her stomach still roiled from the concussion and she could only swallow a few non-squashed grapes and a slice of bread. Kallo finished off the rest of the grapes, noting that they were very similar to a fruit on Sur’kesh and it was a shame there was nothing like them in Heleus.

 

They lapsed back into silence again. Or Kallo did, Jessi had been silent since she started cleaning.

 

There were questions piling up in her brain and it was starting to feel stupid not to ask. Until she noticed Kallo nodding off.

 

“When was the last time you slept?” she said, handing him an emergency blanket.

 

“Did you know salarians don’t need much sleep?” Kallo said, trying to smile.

 

Jessi sighed, placing one hand on her hip. The left one because the right was still tender. Very tender. “I’m not playing, Kallo. You still need sleep.”

 

“Oh, very well. A few minutes wouldn’t hurt…”

 

“Good, give me the data you have on your omnitool and I’ll see if I can get anything--” Jessi cut herself off as Kallo grabbed the blanket from her.

 

Which wasn’t a big thing but the  _ way _ he did it. With both hands. Cupped around hers holding the blanket. Squeezing before taking the blanket. Her silence didn’t seem to faze him since Kallo just went straight to his omnitool to transmit his data.

 

Her heart was still pounding away like she’d run from the hole to the shuttle when the pilot shut his eyes and seemed to be instantly asleep.

 

She wasted probably  _ too _ much time staring at him and imagining reaching out to run her fingers across his cheek. Over the bruises, like that could take them away….

 

What the hell were they doing? What did Jessi think she could possibly do in the hour or two of sleep a salarian needed? There was a giant hole in the shuttle, it wasn’t going anywhere! She groaned, fisting up a hand to press against her forehead, eyes squeezed shut.

 

They were going to die here and all because Jessika Ligh, professional screw up, didn’t find what she was after and Kallo Jath, super sweetheart, wanted to make her feel better. They had maybe enough food to last three days and that was if those things out there didn’t eat them. Not to mention either Jessi or Kallo could have internal injuries they had no clue about they could succumb to. Medigel only got them so far.

 

_ Somebody would have come searching after the 11 hours. _

 

But there would be no sign of a crash or even that they were here at all, down in this Remnant crater. This was yards away from where they were supposed to be. Would they waste resources searching too far?

 

The Pathfinder might. Jessi had Ryder’s pilot, they’d want him back. Plus Suvi was Kallo’s best friend, she’d be worried and do what she could. Nobody was looking for Jessi. Which was fine, so far she’d almost gotten Kallo killed twice.  _ She _ wouldn’t come looking for her.

 

“Okay, okay, enough wallowing,” Jessi chastised herself, crawling to the front of the shuttle.

 

If - and she realized it was a big if - there was some way to save themselves from this mess, it wasn’t going to be done by crying fat guilty tears. It was going to be by sciencing this problem. And Jessi was going to science it real hard until she came up with a miracle that would at least save Kallo.

 

She worked fast to gather any data she had from before the crash, wanting to save the power in the shuttle. It funnelled into her omnitool, but even at those high speeds she knew there was something wrong with it.

 

It was like a data worm had gone through and eaten big chunks. So she ran a diagnosis on the shuttle software and hardware, chewing her bottom lip as the power dropped. It was really going to take a miracle at this rate.

 

Internally, the shuttle said it was fine. Of course it popped up tons of errors about engines being disconnected and, oh, yeah, a big hunkin hole in the side. Plus the right hand stabilizer was torn to shreds, probably from hitting the mountain. All in all, they were sitting in a junk heap. It just didn’t know it yet.

 

No miracle came out of that information.

 

So for a couple of hours, Jessi huddled up in the pilot’s seat, pouring over the readings Kallo had gotten in the ten plus hours she’d been unconscious. It told a story of his journey since they crashed. 

 

After they hit, maybe twenty minutes, there was a quick diagnosis of the shuttle. All reading pretty much as bad as her eyes could tell her, let alone her own more thorough diagnosis.

 

Then came her data. Over and over. Alive but injured. Like… what? Kallo couldn’t believe it? For the next hours in his logs it was like that. Sometimes every twenty minutes, sometimes every five. Like something might have changed. There were a few times where her blood pressure had definitely dropped pretty low or heart rate went up. That made sense to have recorded. But the rest?

 

Eventually it went back to readings of the shuttle, a couple of Kallo’s injuries and then came the stuff she was really interested in.

 

The Remnant.

 

It was all pretty typical, though there was something off about it that Jessi couldn’t put her finger on. She compared it to old readings of Remnant architecture and couldn’t figure out the puzzle.

 

The readings changed suddenly back to her lifesigns. More of the same. Remnant stuff was interspersed but Kallo’s main focus until the end, when he’d been gone and she’d woken up, it seemed to be her.

 

“Anything useful?”

 

Jessi yelped, jumping in the seat. She turned to blink wide eyes at the salarian who had snuck up on her, sitting down on the center console between the pilot and co-pilot seat.

 

“Banana crisps, Kallo, you scared me half to death!” Jessi gasped, hand on her heart.

 

Did salarians pale? Because if they did that was what Kallo was doing right now. And she realized what her words sounded like, especially considering all of those readings…

 

“Figure of speech,” she corrected. She waved her right arm, omnitool still present on it. “There’s a lot of me on here and I know how badly I’m hurt, so no, not useful. How are you, really?”

 

“I’m fine,” Kallo said, though his gaze drifted down and away.

 

“Kallo!” She tried to sound firm. Like he had when he convinced her to struggle into the shuttle. But Jessi’s voice shook a little and she was about ready to scan him herself just to see. “I’m trying to find a way out of this, but if you’re injured and I don’t know…”

 

She could expect him to be able to do something that her plan required and he might not be able to. Then he’d be trapped here and she would have failed.

 

“What?” Kallo looked up. “Oh, no. Scrapes, bruises, nothing too troublesome. Besides salarians heal quickly. No, I’m fine now that I know you’re okay. Physically, anyways. About earlier…”

 

She was holding her breath on purpose. Because blacking out seemed like the only way to escape this conversation. About her panic attack. About how it didn’t help at all and he should have left her behind. It was a liability and should be on her medical files but since she lied and covered it up now they were stuck here and it was all her fault.

 

“I know about your father.”

 

“Huh!?” Jessi’s mouth dropped open. At first just… not sure how  _ that _ was the thing that came out of Kallo’s mouth. Then terrified. And then… “How the hell!?” she snapped, furious.

 

“Not on purpose!” Kallo said. He had the decency to look properly horrified. “Salarians have very good memories and mine is especially good, near perfect. I had heard a doctor speaking with SAM before I even volunteered for this assignment. It’s stuck in my head.”

 

“So… so when you met me…”

 

“Yes…”

 

“Oh my stars.” Jessi was pinned in. She’d have to crawl over to Kallo to get away and since there wasn’t far to go, that seemed pointless. So instead she scooted back, into the dash, tucking her knees into her chest. This wasn’t happening. 

 

“I… I suppose I should have predicted it would go this way,” Kallo said. His hand lifted up, like he might reach for her then, smartly, he rested it back on his knee. “I only bring it up because… I would never abandon you because of your handicap. I wouldn’t regardless. But to imagine that you might think that. All because of what that… that… jerk said. In the presence of a child? It makes me so angry. And I’m afraid that when I got angry earlier, you mistook it as being against you. So I’m sorry Jessika.”

 

“That…” Jessi flipped back through her memories. Him frantically convincing her to get in the shuttle. His anger when he said he would have blamed himself for leaving her behind. Not at her… “That’s it?”

 

“Well, I… uh… no?” Now Kallo seemed the one off guard. “But I kind of figured that was enough for now?”

 

“No, no,” Jessi said. “Go on. I mean, apology accepted. Thanks. What else?”

 

Kallo got visibly jittery. Like she had just passed on her anxiety to him now that she realized that he wasn’t mad at her. That knowing that her father abandoned her and her mom didn’t change her in Kallo’s eyes at all except to think her father was a jerk. Which, he was, and she had years and years of therapy to help her cope with that.

  
They were both distracted, however, when something tapped against the glass of the shuttle.


End file.
